Wednesday, 24 June 2015

#bookreview: The Children of Darkness by David Litwack

What if all that you have ever been taught as good and right, the light that you've been taught to appreciate turns out to be the hand of darkness that has been holding you down?

When Nathaniel Rush of Little Pond discovers that the vicars of the Light have things to hide - things that may change his understanding of the world - he has to decide if he should run away from this knowledge, fitting back into the normalcy of life he has always known, or if he should pursue it, like in his dreams of being a knight and hero.
Along for the adventure is Orah Weber, the girl he would give up his freedom for, and Thomas Bradford, the doubter, the one already broken by the Light. They must find the hidden keep, preserved for centuries by the keepers, so that the truth and knowledge of the past ages and civilizations won't be lost to the world.

Litwack's writing is fresh, and Nathaniel, Orah and Thomas come to life in your imagination as you flip (or click) the pages of this book. That's not to say that the other characters are not well fleshed out as well - they are. You feel for the painful history between Nathaniel's father and Orah's mother, and at times you are even drawn to understand the arch vicar, who seeks the keep for reasons of his own.

The Children of Darkness was originally published as There Comes a Prophet, and has been re-edited, expanded, and re-released with a new publisher in line with its rebranding as book one of the dystopian trilogy, The Seekers. Because I'm not exactly one who remembers minute details of a book I read 2 years ago, I can't tell you exactly what has changed during my re-read - but I would say that the pace has slowed a little, with snippets of Orah's thoughts coming to the fore, pushing her forward as a stronger driver of the story than before.

I received this ebook copy for review as part of a Novel Publicity tour.

About the Author:

The urge to write first struck when working on a newsletter at a youth encampment in the woods of northern Maine. It may have been the night when lightning flashed at sunset followed by northern lights rippling after dark. Or maybe it was the newsletter's editor, a girl with eyes the color of the ocean. But he was inspired to write about the blurry line between reality and the fantastic.

Using two fingers and lots of white-out, he religiously typed five pages a day throughout college and well into his twenties. Then life intervened. He paused to raise two sons and pursue a career, in the process becoming a well-known entrepreneur in the software industry, founding several successful companies. When he found time again to daydream, the urge to write returned.

After publishing two award winning novels, Along the Watchtower and The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky, he’s hard at work on the dystopian trilogy, The Seekers.

David and his wife split their time between Cape Cod, Florida and anywhere else that catches their fancy. He no longer limits himself to five pages a day and is thankful every keystroke for the invention of the word processor.

About Me

Anna likes to believe that she has something to say. Most times though, those "somethings" stay locked in her private little brain, echoing in its emptiness until it one day breaks out into a deluge of whiny rants on her blog.